06-04-04

A court-appointed investigator has resigned from the multibillion-dollar lawsuit by American Indians against the Interior Department, contending the government wanted him off the case after he found evidence that energy companies got special treatment at the expense of impoverished Indians. Alan Balaran, the special master in the case, contends his findings could have cost the companies millions of dollars and that department officials with ties to the industry "could not let this happen."

"Justice has been much too long in coming for the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. ... Billions of dollars are at stake," according to the resignation letter made public by US District Judge Royce Lamberth.

Balaran, who submitted his resignation, said his continued involvement in the case would only be a distraction. The Interior Department accused Balaran of "concocting preposterous charges" to absolve himself of responsibility as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit considers one motion to have him removed from the case for alleged bias and is scheduled to hear another.

"Mr Balaran's theory is based entirely on innuendo, supposition and baseless speculation -- just the sorts of things to which a competent judicial officer would give no credence," the department said.

The department claims Balaran violated judicial ethics by hiring as an expert witness a former Interior contractor who had accused the department of fraud. In a separate letter, the Interior Department notified the Senate Indian Affairs Committee leaders that it plans to ask the appeals court to dismiss the Indian trust lawsuit, saying the department has the matter in hand and a judge should play no further role.

The class-action suit, filed in 1996 on behalf of more than 300,000 Indians, alleges that for more than a century, the government had mismanaged, misplaced or stolen billions of dollars in oil, gas, timber and grazing royalties that the department, by law and treaty, was assigned to manage on the Indians' behalf.

In 1999, Lamberth found the department had breached its trust responsibility, and then ordered the department to tally what the Indians were owed. Balaran joined the case as special master, with the Interior Department's blessing, in 1999. Keith Harper, a lawyer for the Indians, praised Balaran's work.

"Now we see what they do when you go and investigate something that touches their sacred cow, which is energy companies," Harper said.

Last August, he reported private landowners near the Navajo Nation got as much as 20 times more money than Indian landowners from gas pipeline companies for rights to cross their land. He also found holes in the department's Internet security that could leave hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian royalties vulnerable to computer hackers.
As a result, the department's Internet connections have been shut down three different times.

In a positive development, the parties agreed to name two mediators -- Charles Byron Renfrew, a former federal judge and Chevron Oil executive, and John G. Bickerman, a Washington lawyer and professional mediator -- to conduct non-binding settlement negotiations.
It was the first time in nearly three years that the sides held talks and the first time they agreed to mediators.

Source: Associated Press